Bach is president of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs and a member of the NRA Board of Directors. I'd say his thinking and writing is fairly representative of the less extreme wing of the pro-gun community, which is a little scary in itself.

Bach's entry took the County Prosecutors Association of New Jersey to task for its recent call for states with weak gun laws, particularly Pennsylvania, to strengthen them. This in order to diminish the illegal trade that moves handguns from legal sale at gun shops in said states to illegal sale in our state (and their own). It's hard to understand why this request would pose a problem for Bach and his cohorts, but in typical 'no compromise' fashion, it does.

Bach wrote that the prosecutors announced that strengthening Pennsylvania's gun laws would be "the cure for New Jersey's crime problems,' which, of course, they did not, nor do they believe. Bach's "the cure" claim is ridiculous and false on its face.

What the prosecutors said was that, as the top law enforcement officers in their counties, the inflow of illegal handguns from other states makes their jobs far more difficult. This is difficult neither to fathom nor to see what it portends, a severe problem for New Jersey's communities.

Bach also went to great length to describe the handgun purchase background check procedure in Pennsylvania, claiming that "because criminals don't follow gun laws in the first place," stronger gun laws will not impact crime.

What Bach didn't relate is how, because there is no licensing of handgun purchasers or registration of handguns in Pennsylvania (as there are in NJ) and because buyers in Pennsylvania can obtain as many handguns at a time as they wish, criminal entrepreneurs are able to hire stand-ins, who can pass relatively perfunctory federal background checks, to buy guns in bulk in PA for them. These stand-ins are the notorious 'straw purchasers' about whom the public is just beginning to learn.

Bach also failed to relate that the main focus of those seeking to strengthen PA's gun laws is pending One Handgun A Month legislation, which would not require criminals to "follow gun laws" to succeed, because it would be gun dealers who would limit sales by law.

Weak gun laws that enable straw purchasing are a boon to criminals intent on building illegal handgun distribution businesses. These are the traffickers that move illegal handguns to sale on street corners, across kitchen tables and on playgrounds to thugs, drug dealers and their enforcers and violent teens - all people who cannot obtain handguns legally and so depend upon the illegal gun trade. And, these are the handguns that are used to wound, maim and kill.

The interstate version of this illegal trade is what the prosecutors talked about. For, although a significant portion of crime guns recovered in New Jersey were purchased in-state, the overwhelming majority were originally purchased in states with weak gun laws and brought here. Bach conveniently failed to mention this, too.

Evidence? Right there in the data recently published by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (ATF) that the Prosecutors discussed. It shows that nearly 75% of the crime guns recovered in 2006 in NJ were out-of-state guns. This is consistent with past ATF data.

The top external source state for these guns? Pennsylvania, of course.

ATF's 2006 data on PA also shows how damaging the Keystone State's illegal gun market is internally. Namely, unlike the other major states in the Northeast (NJ, NY, CT and MA), the bulk of crime guns recovered in Pennsylvania were originally purchased in-state. Previous ATF data showed that, in fact, the majority of crime guns recovered in Pennsylvania were recovered within ten miles of gun shops where they were bought, an anomaly among Northeast major states.

You can see relevant source state info for NJ and PA respectively on page 6 of:

Bach's prescription for NJ gun violence and crime? End plea bargaining, tougher sentences and no early parole. That's it. Nothing about the inflow of illegal guns. Just the usual ex post facto 'lock 'em up.' Would that life were so simple. And, would that the gun lobby did not distract pols and voters from the truth about the menacing illegal gun trade through purposeful disingenuousness.